Presently known disk drives employ magnetic heads that fly at a predetermined height relative to a rotating disk during transducing operation. Since the magnetic transducers fly very closely to the disk surface, less than 20 microinches for example, a major problem that is experienced is that of head crash, which occurs when the topography of the disk or a spurious distrubance causes the head to impact the disk. Head crashes cause serious damage to the heads and disks, as well as loss of data. Although head crashes are known to occur during drive operation and disk rotation, head crash has also been observed in small mobile and portable disk drives which are used in portable computers, when the computer or disk drive is transported and moved. Therefore it is desirable and necessary to prevent the movement of the magnetic heads during transport of the drive, when the drive is nonoperational, to avoid the problem of head crash. It also is desirable to provide a simple means for loading the heads at a predetermined rate to a precise height relative to the disk surfaces.